Possible advantages of a preemptive strike on Iran

Israel’s safety could best be served by waging a “just war” against a still pre-nuclear Iran.

Louis Rene Beres | August 12, 2024

An illustrative image of warplanes in flight. Source: DeepAI.

During its impending war with Iran, Israel’s overriding objective should be to keep that jihadist enemy non-nuclear. The best way to meet this objective will be by systematically controlling conflict escalations (“escalation dominance”). In the final analysis, this task will require Israel to shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.”

If Iran were an already nuclear enemy state, Israel’s demonstrated capacity for effective self-defense would be severely limited. However, because Iran is still pre-nuclear, the expected Iranian aggression could be a net gain for Israel. Ironically, this foreseeable Iran-created war could offer Israel an eleventh-hour opportunity to prevent enemy nuclearization and avoid a vastly more destructive war. In legal terms, this signifies an opportunity for “anticipatory self-defense.”

“The safety of the people,” declares Roman philosopher Cicero, “is always the highest law.” In the past several months, Tehran has been taunting Israel as if the Jewish state was somehow the weaker adversary. But in any intra-war search for “escalation dominance” by an already-nuclear Israel and a not-yet-nuclear Iran, competitive risk-taking would strongly favor Israel.

From the standpoint of international law, preemption could represent a fully permissible strategic option. Though a “bolt from the blue” Israeli preemption against Iran would involve multiple and intersecting difficulties, these difficulties are unlikely to apply during an already ongoing conventional war. Ritualistically, Iran declares its intention to strike Israel as “punishment.” In law, however, this barbarous declaration is an open admission of mens rea or “criminal intent.”

Even if Iran were not in a condition of self-declared belligerency with the Jewish state, an Israeli preemptive action could still be lawful. Israel, in the fashion of every state under international law, is entitled to existential self-defense. Today, in an age of uniquely destructive weaponry, such law does not obligate Israel or any other state to expose its citizens to increasingly plausible extermination. When hostilities are already underway, Israel’s legal right to attack selected Iranian hard targets would be unassailable. Such hostilities would include surrogate or proxy attacks on Israeli noncombatants by jihadist terror groups.

Prima facie, these are bewildering matters. What should Israeli strategic planners conclude? In part, at least, the answer depends on their view of Iran’s reciprocal judgments of Israel’s leaders.

Do these judgments suggest a leadership in Jerusalem that believes in the potential net benefits of a measured nuclear retaliation? Or do they suggest a leadership in Jerusalem that believes such a reprisal would bring upon Israel variously intolerable levels of conventional Iranian destruction? And is the leadership in Tehran expectedly rational?

All relevant Israeli calculations should assume adversarial rationality.  In the absence of calculations that compare the costs and benefits of available strategic alternatives, what would take place between Israel and Iran would remain just a matter of conjecture. At the same time, the prospect of non-rational judgments in this belligerent relationship is always possible, especially as the influence of Islamist/jihadist ideology remains tangible among Iranian and Hezbollah decision-making elites.

What about the concurrent Gaza War? While Hamas and Iranian leaders declare that the Palestinian dead have become shahids (“martyrs”), their politics-inspired bestowals of immortality are not applied to themselves. Conspicuously, these leaders are not personally interested in acquiring the martyr’s “sacred” power over death. Understandably, perhaps, they prefer the secular circumstances of five-star hotel suites in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

While Israel’s active defenses have previously proven effective against Iranian missile and drone attacks, these defenses against nuclear-armed missiles would have to meet much higher standards. In essence, they would have to be “leak-proof.” However counter-intuitive, therefore, impending Iranian aggressions could offer Israel a life-saving eleventh-hour opportunity to avoid later preemptions against an already nuclear enemy.

For Israel, Cicero’s “safety of the people” could best be served by waging a “just war” against a still pre-nuclear Iran. Though such a permissible war would surely have significant human and material costs, it would be substantially less catastrophic than a war between two already nuclear enemies. This is the case, moreover, even if a newly nuclear Iran was determinably “less powerful” than a nuclear Israel. In any conceivable nuclear conflict scenario, even a “weaker” Iran could wreak intolerable harm on a “stronger” Israel.

Israel has markedly asymmetrical military advantages over Iran. Once the impending war with Iran actually begins, Jerusalem should stay focused on competitive risk-taking and on maintaining “escalation dominance.” Among other things, this means promptly replacing Jerusalem’s traditional posture of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” with a posture of “selective nuclear disclosure.” Under no circumstances should Tehran ever be allowed to believe that Israel’s “bomb in the basement” is merely for show.